and i have the only book that i could read, for some reason it was serhiy osoka's book, three lines for maria, i don't understand, probably it's because it's connected with some kind of very deep, childlike peace, yes, and that's it, it's such an escapist thing that i could dive into these stories once and disconnect from the networks and stay somewhere, rest and go for a walk, and this was already in the first weeks, that is, i took it that way. and as if i switched off and returned to reality, that is , for some reason this was the only book for me, somehow yes, it happened, we have one study, i am always very interested in the fact that ukrainians began to read more during the war, and we have statistics provided by the ukrainian institute, it is a comparison of the 20th year and on the 23rd, if... if in the 20th year

8% of people read, and this is a terribly simple number, 8% of all read, then on the 23rd, 19, and this is a paper book in the ukrainian language, so on the one hand i i look at this 19 and it seems that it is good compared to eight, but they are compared with germany, i mean ukrainian institutes are compared with germany, in germany, 46% of the population reads, i... how do you perceive this jump, is it a jump, or is it, how do you, how do you perceive, first of all, this figure, well, 20%, that is, it is quite small, but that's all some people have started to read more, why do you think, what is the reason for this, why did ukrainians take paper ukrainian books, it seems to me that many people felt that reading is actually a very affordable luxury in the conditions of war, and you you can ground yourself, and when we talk about... this grounding and being in

the moment, it's often quite out of place things in a war, it's hard to talk about, it's hard to talk about publicly, but at the same time it's so important for mental health, and people have felt this benefit of the book as a physical object, if it's good prose, you can immerse yourself in someone else's history, to spend a little time in it and come out of it a little calmer, a little more balanced. even if it's very complex literature and it gives you excitement, but still that's how narrative works, it organizes your thinking, and i think a lot of people have started to discover this very simple power of reading, and i think very first of all, escapism is important, it is the opportunity to live some other experience, to be, even a little bit safe, in this book safety, why did these family stories,

sincerity, why is so popular, for example, evgenia kuznyatsova, because it gives us the feeling of such within the community, well , it has returned to a large extent, and now the fashion for reading is growing, when opinion leaders began to talk about what they read, when some reading projects began to appear in various formats, this definitely affects a wide readership, finally many simply discovered ukrainian culture for themselves, in my school years it was rather a process of weaning. of ukrainian literature, this is an ideological reading, it is not beneficial to anyone, while now, as people return and read books in a new way, it turns out that you can freely talk about the book, interpret the book, see something very personal, very special in it, and there is no some wrong ideas about literature, it seems to me that this freedom that reading gives and the freedom to talk about it, the opportunity to find like-minded people on the basis of the book, on the basis of reading as a process, it is many. already

attracted to reading, but we are only at the beginning, of course, in germany, cultural reading programs have existed since the 70s on a permanent basis on the main channels, and everything is just beginning here, so i would not expect a quick result, we have the survey, the actual answers to why people read, we have the numbers, the ukrainian institute of the future also conducted such a study, so look, 49%, that is, almost... half say that reading is a way to save yourself, especially during the war, in fact, it is the same, in fact, what we are talking about, 42% say that reading teaches you to make better decisions, even in difficult circumstances, 24% say that reading ukrainian literature is a form of resistance, and so on 21% say that it is support for ukrainian literature, you know, i am impressed by one story, we are with ukrainian... well, we are often in different

regions in the front-line territories, where libraries were either destroyed or, let's say, robbed. yanami, or some other, some other the trouble happened, and we bring books there, and imagine that in kherson, in kherson, there is such an area, an island in the middle of the dnipro, it is 2 km from the line of contact, that is, it is a red zone, there are people living on this island, and they, they make themselves a library in the basement, and they said one such phrase, this initiative is called books in the shelter. and they said that for them the book is a shelter, that’s just right, it’s such an impressive metaphor, you delivered books to my father, he’s fighting right there 2 km away, that’s why he was happy to remember these books and it helps the fighters a lot, it's fantastic in general, but it's just that it's like

a metaphor that becomes, what a metaphor it is, it's a reality, an absolutely real fact, and now about podcasts, about the boom of book clubs. of literary podcasts and not only on the discussion of ukrainian literature, in general, you very rightly said that talking about books has become not scary, and these podcasts seem to have brought closer what seemed so unattainable to us, we gathered, thought with our editor kateryna danylovych, we danylovych, we mentioned what kind of podcasts or clubs there are in ukraine, we mentioned first of all the podcast bohdana took and read on radiopodil. you see right now,

stasinevich, yevgeny, the literary critic, and serhiy cherkov standaper, there is ukrlit, actually you see now ukrlit - they are comedians, i understand, they talk about... ukrainian literature, about literature in general, there is a book depository of olena huseinova, there is currently no the names of bohdana nabarak and anastasia yevdokimeva, there is a cult podcast by volodya yermolenko and tetyana ogarkova, where they talk about culture and literature, in particular, here is this, you see, this is rosyslav semkiv talking with vira ageyeva about literature, a podcast of crazy authors, there is a mustache. gogol, where stand-up artists vadym kyrylenko and nikita rybakov talk about books, there is a high shelf by bohdan bohdana romantsova, there are aesthetes, there is also a podcast that is on the ukrainian week, there is a repainted fox,

where educator valentina merzheevska and psychologist maria didenko discuss books from that point of view, it's not them, it's bohdana and anastasia, but there's such a psychological... context podcast about literature, what's the reason for that, well, it's amazing, actually, that's amazing, if you keep in mind that this is in the last few years, in fact, what is the reason for such a flourishing of these conversations about literature, what do you think? i think i listen to almost all of these podcasts, but i am surprised that i listen to almost all of them, and half of them i was a guest, and i think that , first of all, they are quite different, and everyone can choose something of their own, you can listen to... something, relatively speaking, it's more complicated, you can listen to people joking about literature, you can listen to how some specific optics are applied to literature, you can listen to professors, you can listen to people who deployed tagrolov for the first time yesterday and it hurts them, and they are ready to share, and such a variety, it seems to me that this is a very

healthy story, a very healthy trend, a bunch of knives, and they are all filled, and each niche has its own audience, bigger, smaller, but everywhere the audience is quite active, and it seems to me that ... all these absolutely podcasts are made by young people, yes, well , rostislav senkiv is also young, er, they somehow bring this young audience closer, that is , you don’t get some very clear teachers, they don’t start teaching you to understand literature, but they talk to you and you can join conversations , they will give you an answer in the comments, that is, it is some kind of free conversation, it is something very ancient, it seems to me, so how did it start, how did it start, i would... for me, i will tell, for me , what started it, for me it started with the club of bibliophages, which was organized by oksana zabushko in urban 500, and it was during the covid, during the epidemic, we gathered at the risk of everyone, there who wore masks, what, who without masks and

discussed books, for me this is such a book club, that's how it started, where did it start for you, what do you remember, how it started, started it all, i have a very personal story with this, i remember this project that was actually called a podcast, but almost no one remembers it. as a podcast, these are cultural meetings that took place in the dzyga art center in lviv thursday this was done by yuriy kucheryavy, a poet and philosopher who is currently at the front. and every thursday it was an incredible luxury to come and listen to an interesting person. andriy izdryk recorded all this thanks to dziza and kucheryavy. we actually have a considerable archive of the voices of poets whom we... today we can only remember, but i immediately have in my head, let's say, igor remaruk or nazar gonchar, and i

saw how this recording was made like this, here and now, at the same time, i understood that after the event i had the right to ask questions, let me there is no professional education or a certain aplomb that should allow me to speak, let's say at the moment, like the moderators at the microphone, but still my opinion is worth expressing. and it was terribly inspiring, as i understand it, today, and later formed some kind of conceptual framework of how i imagined potential new projects about literature, and it was actually in the 2000s it was still starting, so in the 2000s, when it was not yet podcast, when we didn't know the word podcast yet, the americans knew, but we didn't know, i remember, i remember how i had a conversation with taras porokhatsky, and i asked him what and which ones? you listen to podcasts, he said in his soft, very attentive manner: what is this, what is a podcast, that is, i

understand that we learned about it four or five years ago, that's how it started here to appear, eh, where did it start for you, bagdan, i too, probably from personal history, once upon a time we had a literary and critical site lyakcent, where i wrote quite actively as a critic, and at some point we decided make a reading club airplane cent ugh. he was monthly and at first, critics gathered, mainly people with specialized education, but gradually a certain skeleton of readers began to form, some came for a specific book, for example, a detective book, some came for a certain author, sometimes authors came and presented their book, and it was a conversation where we could eyes to tell miroslav laiuk what we liked in his book and what we didn't, and then some fans came, or those who had something. to say, and gradually such a circle was formed, when the official part ended, we we always went to the bar and we always didn't have much, and i

remember how we sat just until closing time with yaroslava strykha, roxilana sviato and she talked about literature, and we couldn't talk, and that's how it all started, probably this story, how can you gather a circle and talk with people you are interested in, and even if they agree somewhere, even if you fiercely argue, this does not make you enemies, on the contrary, it is a very interesting kind of ... energy exchange, but we are still talking about such a certain bubble, you and i seem to belong to this bubble, where it is natural, so that we, we discuss, speak, but it is not enough for us, we want to communicate, discuss books, but i feel that it has now completely broken out of this bubble, as well as those people for whom or for whom, let's say, we talked last week with vakhtan kibuladze about what is so clinging... to bulgakov and to his myth of kyiv, it's because people simply haven't read, don't know

the myth of ukrainian kyiv, yes at that time, they did not read the girl with the girl with the bear, no read dr. seraphicus, they did not read the city of the cemetery, the clouds of necheilovitsa, i.e. people who grew up on a different cultural soil, from a different cultural humus. russian, soviet, yes, they suddenly, suddenly became interested in this, this ukrainian literature, yes, and names that were once not spoken to them, this is how the war did it, yes, this is how it works, how this, i i just understand that this war seems to have returned people to the field, it is ukrainian cultural, but still, it is very difficult, because that's it... i always say that you love what you know, and what you don't know, you can't love, and suddenly they, and suddenly

they loved it, suddenly they were interested in it , and suddenly it became for them like a part of their, their world, it seems to me that we also became open in our bubble, it is very pleasant to talk to each other, to people who understand you, to whom you do not need to explain anything, for example, some names to contextualize, very nice to sit down and talk, as always. however, this change of conversation, change of the type of conversation, the tone, what requires effort and requires work on oneself, it is very important for us to find new audiences. i know that now in kyiv there are more than 30 reading clubs operating only in libraries, these are the ones, they can be small reading clubs, i just have a friend who is interested in this issue, there can be five of them in a microdistrict, and our authors come there, we, for example, at the tempera publishing house , now constantly present books in libraries, before there was no idea that this was important, but now we understand this need, and people come there,

very often older women, and they are interested to hear what this one wrote there. a guy about a cyberpunk future because it's real contact with the author and it's something new and they 're open. in fact, i think i, for one, definitely greatly underestimated the wider audience, this desire to lock yourself in your stuff from the ivory tower, it's also very tempting, but you can't give in to this temptation. it's very interesting, bohdana, what do you think, how it, how it became... well, it became a menstruum, because i understand that i underestimated the scope of the reading book clubs, now that i have learned the number of book clubs in the libraries of kyiv, and it is certainly not only in kyiv, in fact there are even more of them, there is a separate channel that is taken care of by the bookstore sense, which simply collects information about book clubs in

ukraine, and you you can see what, for example, is being read in clubs in odesa, lviv, and kharkiv. in a word in very different places, and i think that when we talk about this kind of self-discovery, there's such an important decolonial moment here, and it's actually nice to learn that you have more than you have life they said, i try so hard to imagine, you find out that there are, for example, the same beautiful novels of the 20s that you mentioned, which show kyiv. that you can go for a walk through the city simply through these novels, and they will tell you about the capital of your country in the ukrainian language, through some images of ukrainian and european culture. and this is such a pleasant discovery, as it turned out for many. on the other hand, i always try to say that in fact, even those people who, say, did not read and did not

necessarily have to come, say, to reading from russian culture, they might just not read, but... but they may well have a certain sensory experience, a certain type of exposure that, say, travel or a love of cinema gives them, and that will enable them to be good readers, sometimes even immediately, and it also allows you to see new angles of view on the texts, which it would seem that we have already reread dozens of times, and we talk about this city of pidmogilny, as if, you know, such a puck goes along some sharpened paths, in fact, you can see the first, second. .. fifth, and for this you need readers perspectives, these reading perspectives are terribly interesting to me, because i understand that people with different educations, different backgrounds, simply different preferences than me, and my rather narrow bubble, they can offer completely new angles that i will then use, say in my projects, and this will only make these projects stronger, it is very

interesting, here we are now preparing a lot for a conversation with you. i already listen to so many podcasts, but i started, i listened to a lot of things that i have never heard, for example, i listened to gogol's mustache, where are the stand-ups they talk about books, ukrlit, i listened, yes, where comedians talk about literature, and i see that this is a new language, a new language has been invented, in which you can speak, that's what my generation didn't have at all, because we. .. we were told about literature as something that is not given to everyone, that is something very high and about which it is necessary to speak so a little quietly and very respectfully, here people just walk in, and just open the door with their feet, so to to hamlet, and they are just very, very simple even

such slang, that's how they talk about literature, how do you like it? perceive, but how do you listen to it? i perceive it very positively, it seems to me that this formality, which was imposed on us, is catastrophic, as soon as a conventional virtual chorus starts to sound from behind, you have to get out of shape, then wear a very long skirt, then immediately something is not okay, and i think it is great that they are finding this new language, that this language is different, that it is accessible, and as an editor, i am constantly asked by young... authors if it is possible in the texts squirm? i say: yes, please, give it, and i give several examples so that they understand that all this is possible, we will have even more registers, we will have even more opticians, we will have even more. different points of view, then it will be a more interesting project, and i do, i also really like it when new people come in who are not professional literary critics, who are not my

fellow students, far from it, and they can give something completely new and interesting, and their speech is lively, and their minds are very inquisitive, and i am especially pleased when some appear very youthful initiatives, teenage ones, when it takes off in tiktok, when we have a desire not just to steal the rock scene as a star, but also to be a star... tiktok, and this seems to me to be incredibly valuable, because tiktok is now largely producing literature and can sell entire editions, and these are all very different techniques, but anything that works for the benefit of literature, i am for it with both hands. i think that podcasts are generally a very liberal genre of the medium, because even to take our conversation with you here and now, we are sitting in a studio, and it takes an incredibly large amount of work number of people behind the scenes so that we can have a dialogue with you. shared, and the viewer is not interested, he should not even think about it, he should be comfortable and interested, a debutant podcaster, he cannot afford such a team, but

very often he has a smartphone where he can experiment with the recording, buy an inexpensive loop, record a conversation by yourself or with a friend, edit it and pour it, try it, and how will it work, and you talked about gogol's mustache, i know that they started with two loops and recorded the sound of turning the page themselves, it was very budget product, but later, if success comes, if your language is read by your audience, of course you can afford more experiments, and that's what i'm very interested in watching those projects that grow, but they keep this very liberal spirit, sometimes they dive and in the expert part, they involve literary experts in their projects, again, and such incredibly interesting interactions take place, but in this there remains a kind of wildness that is very healthy. on the other hand, i

really like volodymyr yarmolenko's cult podcast and tetyana ogarkova, and i believe that the medium of the podcast also allowed them to be more liberal in their conversation, that is, perhaps those things that they cannot afford within the framework of lecture courses or books, which they have quite formal. this is a high shelf, for sure, but in the podcast they can allow a certain experiment, which may or may not be expressed in an academic form later, but there is a thrill from this experiment, which we as listeners can simply perceive in our ears, and this will already move our thoughts, and that's why i really like this freedom, which bring such genres, by the way, gogol's mustache, i listened today, i am still under the impression. conversations about shakespeare, about shakespeare , and about hamlet, where they call hamlet, it seems, son of the beach, and ophelia

is a slut, and this, well, this is actually, it’s interesting to listen to something in this, and they mention you very often bohdan, they say no, he's a smart guy, let's not be this smart guy, because it's more bohdan, not barak, let him do it, it's so deliberate, it's so deliberate. in fact, we give each other greetings in this way, yes, but look, i understand this kind of point of view, and i'm very close to what it is, that it's all desecralized and deformed, and that everyone can say, and i'm not a purist at all, but on the other hand, i sometimes listen to it and i wonder if we are not simplifying in this way, whether or not some person can... young to hear it, yes, and it, well, like, can it be a spoiling of taste and optics, when too much of it is driven into a very already simple such

forms, low, i think that any good podcast, and whether it is very destructive, or whether it's more like a really high shelf, it's supposed to encourage reading first, look at the source, which is the main purpose of the podcast, why does everyone make you go and... form an opinion, and i really like it when there's resistance in the audience, for example, to to my words or to my position, because i know that if there is opposition, it means that they will go and look and express their position, so they will argue, they will debate, maybe they will write a comment that i do not like on youtube, but they will go, understand and form their vision, therefore, any good story, any good podcast and conversations, they should encourage to go and form with... my opinion, again, not to impose a ready-made matrix, but at school we were imposed one matrix, and now we will impose another matrix , a different thread in other words, but also a matrix, and go and

look for it yourself. and good podcasts, they cope with this, even if their position can be undermined, then the moment of undermining will generate an intellectual discussion, but in order for there to be an intellectual discussion and or, for example, to trigger something, or you disagreed or disagreed with something , so you must already know something, and if it is, for example, a very young person who has not read anything, and here she is told in a very simplified form, and she seems to have the feeling that, well, i ... i already know, i know it already, i know it can be such an effect, yes, when, in a very banal plan , some things are retold, or reflected on some things, it can also be like this, i think, now such a time when we feel very much the importance of curation and the importance of those people who offer us keys to different doors, such, let's call them

intellectual doors, let's say there are a number of series of classics, and important are these comments before or after the text, where we understand that, say, vera ageeva, rostyslav semkiv or yaryna tsymbal or other literary critics, which we trust will tell us something about the author and the text. let's say, i'm thinking about the figure of lesya ukrainka and how a person forms a private relationship with her, not a school one, not because of the image on the banknote, but a personal one, and it's not always so easy. just take the story of oksana zabushko about lesya ukrainian woman, immerse yourself and understand everything, and then in fact these promotional projects come to us, which can offer the keys to understanding, you listen to one thing, another, you learn the history, the context, after that you come to the original text, and then it is quite possible , you can open something

more complicated. at the same time, i... do not want to completely devalue ukrainian readers, because i am convinced that many people, what i actually said, but i want to repeat, they can immediately immerse themselves in what we consider complex texts, and there is no need for this to be afraid, because sometimes the experience you have before will allow you to perceive well even what seemed inaccessible and the highest shelf, or something that was rejected all the time by you during school at school. from the school curriculum, i hear a lot of such opinions, well, for my generation, it's like that ukrainian literature, teachers of ukrainian literature, it was something that, on the contrary, turned us away from ukrainian literature. i'm wondering how things are going now, if anything has changed at the school, or if you know someone who has schoolchildren, from whom you can find out how , for example, olga kobylyanska or the same lesya ukrainka are studying there now, and.

has changed, i never refuse to meet with schoolchildren, because it is an opportunity to actually hear what they live, the change of the school curriculum helped a lot, and the way it was reformatted from junior high school and later helped a lot, which was led by many modern ukrainian writers, that now they read the fairy tales of hali tkachuk, volodymyr arinev, there is tanis tus and other living, real writers who write on current topics. urban schoolchildren will not be moved by a boy with a cow walking through a field, well, no one is interested in this cow, and it seems to me that such a change in the program and a reduction in the number in favor of slow, careful reading of the text, it works very well at the school level, it works very well in involvement of various formats, films, discussions, debates. all

the invitations of living writers, talking with them, it seems to me that my school program was very overloaded, i had to constantly read huge volumes and well, i loved to read, but even for me it was not easy, and when they chose mathematics between mathematics and literature, because mathematics is more important, it will be needed in life, because it is the exact sciences, and literature was neglected, it was there christomatiya, a retelling, if there are such huge volumes , and no one can cope with them, they had to be reduced. and now i see these trends, and when i come to school, i really like that students very often have their own opinion on this topic, that they can tell me, no, this poem by taras hryhorovych does not fit anywhere, that's why, that's why therefore, and to me i really like that they are ready to argue with taras hryhorovych, because i, for example, did not have such courage when i was 12, but they do, so i think that modern youth, they are very critical, they...